


Inevitability and the Abyss

by Zoi no miko (zoi_no_miko)



Category: Melancholia (2011)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Yuletide 2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 16:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoi_no_miko/pseuds/Zoi%20no%20miko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael reflects on the fight against the inevitable and the downward spiral of losing to melancholia</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inevitability and the Abyss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janet_carter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janet_carter/gifts).



They'd had the marriage annulled. It was really the only thing to do.

Michael hadn't even seen Justine, just a lawyer and a quiet, apologetic John, his blue eyes soft with a mix of sympathy and understanding. The cold, angry part of Michael though that the sympathy should really go the other way, because he'd escaped, and John was the one still trapped. John would still have to deal with that family, with those women. Michael was free.

The other part of him, the part still grieving for love lost and a heart broken was quietly envious. Because John had succeeded where he had failed. John had found himself a quiet little niche of sanity amidst the chaos; John had proven himself and been accepted and was _family_. Michael had failed.

He tried not to think about Justine.

He'd met Justine during one of her good times. Her manic periods were beautiful, full of energy and voracity and inspiration, and she'd swept him off his feet. She was intoxicating, with all her fire and creativity. And by the time she crashed down into her first valley of depression he was so in love with her that he was willing to deal with anything. No one could be perfect, after all. And lots of people lived happy, successful lives with her condition. So he was accepting and supportive and when she finally came out of it he told himself that it hadn't been all that bad after all. It was survivable. It was worth dealing with, if it meant being with Justine.

The next time had been harder, longer, and at times she was near unresponsive, though his kisses awoke a fever of passion in her, a voracity of need that kept him afloat, reminded him that she was still alive and still Justine under there. But it didn't bring her out of the depression, and finally, desperately, he proposed in an effort to bring back her smile. It seemed to be the answer he'd been looking for, and for ages she was deliriously happy. They celebrated their engagement with Justine's sister Claire who came into town with her family, with her husband John and their young son, and for a short, giddy time their days were filled with champagne and restaurants and John treating them to everything. And Michael actually believed that everything was going to end happily ever after.

They set the date during one of her manic times, and Michael basked in the warm glow of Justine's happiness. Just as everything she did her plans were beautiful and grand: securing John's beautiful golf course manor for the reception, shopping for her dress, planning themes and events and menus and wedding invites, and Michael quietly prayed that they could get married when Justine was like _this_. Part of him wanted to whisk her away to Vegas and get married and be done with it, but that would, he supposed, defeat the whole purpose of getting married. He imagined the day would be bright and warm and beautiful, full of so much life and happiness that it would anchor itself in Justine's memory as a golden, glowing memory to sustain her through harder times. It had to be. He refused to consider that it would be anything but.

Then she fell again, and Michael woke up one morning to her ring on the nightstand with a note.

 _'Dearest Michael,  
I can't, in all good conscience, allow you to marry me.  
There's a weight on my shoulders that threatens constantly  
to pull me under and drown me, and I can't expect or hope  
that you will be able to help lift it from me. I can't burden  
you with this sadness for the rest of your days.  
Please forgive me,  
\- Justine'_

She'd taken a little of her wardrobe, but few things otherwise, so Michael couldn't believe that she was gone for good. For weeks he waited for her to come home, left messages on her cell phone, at her office, with Claire and John and anyone else he could think of. He even tried to contact her parents, and while her mother hung up on him immediately, at least her father listened quietly, sympathetically.

"Don't rush her," he said finally. "My beautiful daughter will always do things on her own time. She'll work through things and come back when the time is right. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can influence her moods, my dear boy. Just listen to her and do as she asks, and things will work themselves out in the end."

Michael didn't know if he could believe that. As the days passed his despair grew, until he began to wonder if he had any hope of ever seeing Justine again. He received one text message from her, almost a week after she left, but it didn't boost his spirits at all.

 _'Not dead. Not coming home. Please stop looking for me.'_

All of his replies went unanswered.

After almost a month he decided that he needed to face the facts and accept that she wasn't coming back. He went to a bar, got gloriously drunk, and went home with the first girl to make eyes at him who looked nothing like Justine. The sex was frantic and hard and emotionless, and he left as soon as she fell asleep, taking a cab home and trying to rub the last fuzziness of the alcohol from his eyes.

Inside their apartment, Justine was sitting on the couch, still and silent in the darkness. She looked up as he closed and locked the door, blinking in the dim light from the entryway that washed over her. Michael's stomach wrenched in a mixture of happiness and grief, and for a moment he just stood in the entryway, looking at her.

"I'm sorry," he said finally, "I - "

"It's all right," Justine replied, though her mouth twisted a little. "It's all right, I do it too. Before we started dating I went out a lot whenever I felt like this, I just needed an anonymous fuck to try and make me feel again."

"And now?" Michael asked softly, tentatively, but Justine only looked away.

"I just came back to say goodbye. I can't stay with you, Michael."

Michael shook his head, crossing to sit beside her on the couch, taking both of her hands in his. "You can't, or you don't want to? Please don't think that I can't cope with this. I can. I love you, and I can go through anything with you as long as you don't give up on us. We can make it through this together. I promise you that."

"You can't know that," Justine replied helplessly. "Michael, you don't know what it's like for me. Even when I'm happy I live in constant dread of times like this. It's like being on the Titanic and _knowing_ that it's going to hit that iceberg and you can't do anything to stop yourself from plunging into the icy depths of the Atlantic, no matter what you do or how hard you try. And I love you but it's so hard, so unbelievably hard to force myself to smile at you sometimes. It's not fair to you."

"I don't make you happy at all?" Michael asked, his stomach chilling into a small, frozen knot of turmoil.

"You do." Justine freed a hand from his and lifted it to stroke his cheek and into his hair. She leaned closer to lean her forehead against his, giving a soft exhalation of breath that teased against his lips like the kiss he so badly wanted from her. "Michael, when everything is good you make me so happy. I'm so grateful for that. You've made me so happy, and I love you so much. I just can't expect you to keep doing this and I can't keep pretending...."

"Then don't pretend," Michael replied helplessly. "Don't pretend around me. Just stay with me. I promise I'll take care of you. Whether you’re happy or sad or anything. I'll take care of you."

"I want to stay." Justine's voice was just as helpless as his, and she curled closer, nestling her face into his neck and shivering when he dared to stroke a hand down her back. "I do. I want to stay. I'm just afraid of what will happen when you get tired of this and leave me."

"I won't leave you," Michael replied, tightening his arms around her. "I'll make you happy, I promise."

She half-wrenched away from him, looking up at him with tears bright in her eyes. "Don't say that. Don't promise something you have no control over. Just promise you'll stay."

"I promise I'll stay," he replied without hesitation, and when she took him to bed he tried not to think of the possibility of another man's hands on her breasts, someone else's mouth on her sex. It was too much to contemplate. He needed to focus on the victory of Justine just being here.

Regardless of her words, Michael was determined not to give up the fight. He'd made her happy before; he could continue to do so. It was just a matter of finding the right stimulus, the right trigger to turn her away from her moods and back towards the happy Justine he loved so much. It seemed that her homecoming had done the trick, and in the weeks leading up to the wedding she dove back into her preparations and her work with reckless abandon, happy and enthusiastic and once again his Justine.

Things were going to be okay.

Two days before the wedding he caught Justine curled up on the window seat in their apartment's second bedroom, staring out at the darkened sky, quiet and still. Michael forced himself to smile, crossing the room to drop to lean down to cup her face and turn it to his for a kiss, warm and lingering. "Tired, my bride? Come help me pack for Paris."

The mention of their honeymoon brought a smile to her face, and she followed him into their bedroom, helping him fill his suitcase and gently teasing him about the horrible fashion choices he tried to sneak in just to get a reaction from her. It was enough for Michael to ignore the troubled look he would catch on her face now and then when she didn't think he was paying attention.

He was still determined that things were going to be okay.

Throughout the wedding she seemed happy, but he'd come to know Justine a little better in their months together, come to recognize the hints that showed through when she was just putting on a show. He almost wished that he didn't know, that he could ignore it and just pretend that she was actually happy. He did everything he could to distract her from it, teasing her with soft words of love and promises of sex, with affection and finally with the surprise he'd wanted to save: the beautiful plot of land he'd bought for them to build on together. None of it had worked, and when she left the photo of their land behind despite her promise to hold onto it always it stung him, brought on a despair that he couldn't push away. Did she even care about his efforts? What was the point of continuing to fight if she wouldn't fight it herself?

He shoved the photo back in his wallet and tried to tell himself that everything was going to be okay.

When they were finally alone in the beautiful guest suite that John had given them Michael tried to ignore the somber note in Justine's voice, tried to tell himself that she was just tired, not unhappy. He couldn't let himself believe that he was failing, that this was ending. But more and more it felt like Justine was slipping through his fingers like sand, like the tighter he tried to hold onto her, the faster she slipped away. As if he was powerless to do anything.

No. Thing were going to be okay.

He could still make her feel again. She wanted to be happy, he knew she did. So he kissed her, tried to coax her into bed, let loose his passion and did everything he knew that she liked; kissing her throat, the tops of her breasts, stroking a hand up her thigh to tease her, craving the warmth of her body and the shiver of her pleasure.

She pushed him away.

For a long moment Michael sat on the end of the bed in his boxers and the remains of the too-stiff tuxedo he'd rented for the day, staring at the door she'd disappeared through. She'd asked for a minute, and left. He wanted to follow her, but deep inside he knew it was useless.

He'd lost.

Standing at the window he looked over the grounds of John's magnificent manor, shaded and dark, the light from the manor windows fading as it fell onto the grass. He caught sight of Justine: a mass of white tulle and lace, a nightmare disguised as purity. She stalked away from the manor and out onto the golf course, and then he saw the silhouette of that damn boy that had been tasked with shadowing her all night still following her, and Michael _knew_ , somehow, exactly what would happen.

Perhaps Justine had been right after all. He couldn't do this.

He could hardly look at her when he saw her again, could barely speak to her, choking back the lump in his throat. He wanted her to ask him to stay, to beg for forgiveness and promise her love... but Justine had given up this fight a long, long time ago.

Instead he went home, packed his things, and stashed them in storage and the spare room at his parent's house. He'd cancelled the honeymoon tickets to Paris, and instead bought a single one-way to Spain, spending the rest of the summer in nightclubs and on boats and at beach parties, pushing away the sorrow with the reckless abandon of the heartbroken. He'd gotten drunk and wenched in little pubs and restaurants, gone to underground nightclubs and gone home with models and raver girls, indulged in lines of heroin and the occasional bump of ketamine, loosing himself to drug induced numbness and highs.

He tried not to think about Justine.

He'd just began to put his life back together when the scientific world realized the threat of Melancholia and the world broke out into a panic. Strangely, Michael just felt calm. Some things were inevitable, no matter how hard you fought against them. If he hadn't been able to do a simple thing like keep Justine happy, what could he do to prevent something as huge as the end of the world?

He briefly considered Justine and Michael and Claire, briefly wondered if they'd all band together in the beautiful house with its eighteen-hole golf course and its stables and Justine's temperamental horse. He wondered if the imminent threat of obliteration would pull Justine from her own melancholia so they could spend their last few days with John and Claire dancing and drinking and making love. He imagined Justine, radiant and happy; imagined John with his facts and his telescope, a beacon of strength to Claire and Leo. What would it be like if he was with them? Would he finally be family? He almost traveled there just to find out, but he couldn't bear the thought that things wouldn't be like that. What would he do if he arrived and found Justine the listless, depressive creature that had thrown his life into such despair?

He couldn't end his life like that.

Finally Michael packed a suitcase, bought a plane ticket, and bid his parents a tearful and loving goodbye. Then he flew back to Spain, losing himself again to the maelstrom of the nightclubs and the drink and the girls and the drugs, letting go and giving into hedonism without restraint. Perhaps it was fickle and shallow of him... but what did it matter? Life was going to be obliterated. There would be nothing left behind: no legacy, no memories, no family. Just the abyss.

The newspapers had stopped reporting suicides and the morgues were full, but he was determined to hold on until the last moment. To feel as much and as vividly as he could. When Melancholia began to approach for the second time he joined a group of dancers on the beach of Ibiza, moving to the rhythm and bass of the DJ's set up nearby. The evening sun was dimmed from the shadow of the planet, which cast its own blue glow down on them, leaving everything strangely vivid and surreal. Outside the circle of the dance he could see people holding each other, crying, some praying like there was still some way to prevent this. But what was the point? You couldn't fight this.

A pretty, dark haired Spanish girl slipped a blue pressed pill past his lips with a soft kiss, sending his world into bright, drug-induced happiness. Melancholia looked almost beautiful as it grew larger, and for a moment he just closed his eyes and let the thrum of the music move through his body, resonating with the distant, bone-deep vibration of the approaching planet. Then he leaned down to scoop up a handful of sand, staring as it slowly slipped past his fingers, particles of dust floating up around him, confused by Melancholia's gravitational pull.

The air had grown thin again, but it only made the moment more euphoric. An idea formed in his mind, but he realized he'd known it all along: this was fitting, that things should end this way. That he should be just as helpless now as he was with Justine. That everyone should know how life really was and how helpless they all were to fight against it, and how the only thing one could do was to make the most of each and every single moment like he realized that he wished he'd done with Justine.

He allowed the momentary thought of Justine, because beneath the sorrow and the regret as a strange new feeling surfaced. A feeling of completion. Of triumph. He was here of his own accord, living the last moments of his life for himself as his own person, no longer a slave to a desperate romantic ideal or an impossible promise he'd made.

He was free. He hadn't failed anything. There was nothing to regret.

He was -

~End~


End file.
